Polymeric foams have broad applications, from packaging to thermal insulation. However, many industrial foams have drawbacks regarding their sustainability and fire performance. Specifically, extremely toxic precursors are polymerized through irreversible routes often with added volatile blowing agents or solvents, producing significant waste. Recently, <i>self-foaming </i>(pre)polymers were developed to tackle these problems. These foams are defined as an expandable polymeric system using a blowing agent embedded in the (pre)polymer precursor structure. In this study, we took this concept to create a rigid, moldable, and recyclable foam in combination with the bio-based polymer lignin, recovered from industrial pulping operations. The compression and bending tests indicated that the resulting foam had similar mechanical performances (modulus and strength) to those benchmark materials (e.g., polyurethane foam, styrofoam, and phenol foam), but had a wider operating temperature window. In addition, the foams’ unique composition and porous structure lead to flame extinguishing properties (UL94 level - 5VA) and excellent thermal insulation. The foam has hydrolyzable linkages that allow the material to either readily be reprocessed to make new rigid foams or upcycled to produce valuable precursors for other plastics. The lignin-based rigid foam with these performance-advantage properties will potentially resolve the aforementioned problems with traditional synthetic foams synthesized from toxic precursors.

Recyclable self-foaming rigid foam from carbon storage resources

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ACS Fall 2022

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